Rossi: Murray ‘created deficits,’ I’ve balanced budgets

Dino Rossi has been the de facto face of the state Republican Party since 2004, when he lost an excruciatingly close gubernatorial race to Chris Gregoire after two recounts and a protracted court fight. Two years ago, Gregoire beat him again, decisively.

Rossi

Now Rossi, a former state senator who has long worked in commercial real estate, is running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Patty Murray. Some polls show him with a slight lead over the three-term incumbent, who is hoping not to be swept out by an anti-incumbent wave that seems to be building across the country.

But if Rossi’s going to prevail, he’s going to need the support of the conservative base of his party, which seemed to prefer Tea Party favorite Clint Didier. Didier finished third in last month’s primary. The Eastern Washington farmer and former pro football player declined to endorse Rossi, demanding he first make firm pledges on things like abortion and taxes. Rossi, who will also need to convince enough moderates to vote for him if he’s going to win in November, refused. One local pollster said Rossi has “a very tight rope to walk.” But during an interview with seattlepi.com last week at his Bellevue campaign office, Rossi seemed confident. He spoke about his happiness in being able to run in a non-presidential election (no George W. Bush at the top of the ticket), why he opposes all stimulus spending – including the package put forward by President Bush, and why he thinks he’s the Goldilocks candidate this time around – not too conservative, not too liberal.

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:

This is your third run for state office. What are you hearing from people now, and how is that different from what you’ve heard in the past?

It’s very different. This is the first time I haven’t had to run in a presidential year. And so I get to run on my own merits. That makes a very big difference.

In the first two and a half months of this campaign we’ve put enough miles on the car to go to New York and back three times. I’ve been going from small town to small town, doing a small event in Cathlamet, or Seaview or Pomeroy or Colville. A lot of these folks haven’t seen too many U.S. Senate candidates before. The main issues, it really comes down to jobs and the economy. That’s what people are concerned about – they’re worried about making their mortgage and feeding their kids right now. That’s what they’re worried about, and rightfully so.

We have a functional unemployment rate of somewhere around 17.4 percent. You end up with people who are collecting unemployment insurance, the ones who have been unemployed so long they’ve given up and then the ones who have real skills and are out delivering pizzas. That’s practically two out every 10 people you know aren’t making it for their families.

So what we’ve been doing is assembling, especially in these little towns, is small businesses. Because that’s really going to be what’s going to get us out of this mess. It’s not the Boeings and the Microsofts of the world. We want them to all be well, but most job growth – 64 percent since ’92 came from small businesses.

So, what do we have to do to help them grow and be productive is really what the discussions have been at these roundtables. What I’m finding is many of the business owners say, ‘Look, I probably could buy new equipment and maybe hire somebody and try to expand. I probably could pull out a wall here and hire a few more plumbers’ or whatever type of business their in. But they say, ‘I’m not going to. Because I have no idea what my government’s going to do to me next week.’ They don’t know what they’re health care costs are going to be. They don’t know what other costs, such as the 2001, 2003 tax cuts, whether they’ll be authorized. More than two and a half million Washingtonians receive tax benefits from that.

Small business, like any business, needs to be able to plan three and five and 10 years down the road if you’re going to make a very large cash investment to grow your business. If you don’t know what you’re government’s going to do you next week, you aren’t going to do it. And that’s where we are.

This economic downturn has largely been blamed on the bursting of the real estate bubble. You’ve had a long career in real estate. Was there irresponsible behavior in that sector that led to the mess we’re in?

You know the problems, let’s go right back to one of Patty Murray’s ads, the talk about the financial reform bill. The epicenter of the meltdown was (government-sponsored mortgage buyers) Fannie and Freddie, and Fannie and Freddie happened to be left out of that bill. Reform with Fannie and Freddie would’ve been part of that. But Fannie’s a big contributor to Patty Murray as well, and I think that’s going to be part of this problem as we go forward.

The reality is that there are a lot of risks that were taken that probably shouldn’t have been taken. I’ve been in the commercial real estate business. Started with nothing, a $200 car and 200 bucks in the bank. And when interest rates were 20-something percent. When I started in the business, it was a very, very difficult time. So I cut my teeth in a difficult time – I knew that trend lines don’t always go straight up. Which is why I hadn’t purchased a property since 2005 because I couldn’t make sense of it. My business sense was, you know, money in, money out, something left over that could be called profit. I couldn’t figure out what was left over. People were buying blue sky, because they were buying something down the road that they weren’t seeing at that time.

So the market seemed overheated to you?

Certainly, that’s why I just stayed on the sidelines when things got too crazy. I started in a very difficult time. When I started I started selling apartment buildings in Western Washington. I’d say the first four buildings I actually sold for people, I sold for less that what they paid for them four years earlier and they were kissing me to get rid of the negative cash flow. You have to be very careful. The trend line doesn’t always go straight up.

Let’s talk about financial reform. You mentioned Fannie and Freddie, which weren’t in the bill. What specifically about the bill don’t you like?

Well, that’s very specific. Also the fact that they created six super banks that the Wall Street Journal even said could be bailed out. I know Patty claims she ended bailouts, but the Wall Street Journal and CBS News disagreed with her. So that’s a problem.

The other things, the reality is one of the big pieces as I’m talking to regional and community banks, these are the ones in the little communities who are showing up at these roundtables. They’re saying this financial reform bill is going to make it more expensive for our customers because the big boys can absorb the cost and we can’t. And when the small business is going to expand a little bit, where do they go? They go around the corner to Joe to their neighborhood community bank. And 92 percent of the economists said there would be less money available for small businesses. The last thing small businesses need is less money available to them from banks to grow their businesses. It’s kind of like the Hippocratic Oath, the first thing you do is no harm. Unfortunately I think this went in the wrong direction. There’s some good pieces to it. I mean, transparency, not allowing taxpayer dollars to fund hedge funds. There’s some good pieces.

So you agree there should be more regulation in certain parts of the economic sector?

Oh certainly. We certainly need financial reform. It’s just what they did was the wrong direction.

You talk about small businesses. President Obama is pushing Republicans to pass what he says is a multi-billion dollar funding package that will do what you’re advocating, which is helping to provide money to smaller businesses. The idea has been endorsed by the National Small Business Association. Why do you oppose that?

You’re talking about the bailout for the community banks. It’s baby TARP is what it is. It’s another bailout. What it is, because they had the one bad bill, now they have to have a second bad bill to take care of the first bad bill. They shouldn’t have done the first one in the first place. You don’t just keep doing more bills because you had a first one that was bad. Even Chairman (Chris) Dodd, he made a statement similar to what Nancy Pelosi said before they passed health care, he said, ‘I guess we’re going to have to pass this to see how it works.’ That’s a very dangerous statement when you’re talking about financial reform. You have to be very careful before you do these things…This is not the way, I think, the way public wants legislation to be made.

This first round of stimulus funding began under President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson. Was that wrong?

Yes.

They said without this funding the economy was going to collapse. Should they have just let the chips fall where they may?

I didn’t agree with the stimulus they had done. Part of the problem is, I think in the end what it did was small in comparison to what was done most recently. It still gave the green light to have an almost trillion dollar stimulus, which clearly didn’t work. One thing I think people are getting sick and tired of is when politicians can’t admit when they’re wrong…If you keep doing the same thing over and over and keep expecting a different result, it’s not going to happen. The idea that you can just borrow money from the Chinese and the Saudis and print it, somehow spend it on whatever your pet pork project is that’ll make you a prosperous nation. Well, if that were really true, there’d be no poor nations in the world, would there? But sooner or later they’re going to want their money back and they’re probably going to want some interest along the way.

Let’s talk about health care reform. You’ve been critical of the bill President Obama signed. But big swaths of that bill were actually ideas Republicans put forward in the early 90s. They wanted to keep a privatized system, but they said you have to make people buy private insurance, otherwise the insurance companies would be stuck with people who were expensive to cover, while younger, healthy people opted not to pay for insurance. Why is the bill that was passed not a good one? And why is an idea that was essentially advanced by Republican Bob Dole 15 years ago, how does that go from being a business-friendly concept to a form of creeping socialism?

Well, when you have a $500 billion tax increase it’s going to kill jobs. It’s clearly going to kill jobs. Most of the small businesses haven’t figured out how much it’s going to cost them. But one big company in our state has a whole room full of accountants, roughly estimated how much it’s going to cost them, the Boeing Corporation, that was $115 million a year. Well, if you replicate that across the state of Washington that means there’s going to be tens of thousands of jobs that will be lost or not created because of Patty Murray’s 60th and deciding vote on this bill. If you look at the pieces of this puzzle, and how expensive it’s going to be, it’s heading in the wrong direction. The idea that they have to hire 16,000 new IRS agents to administer our health care. I don’t know about you, but I’m not all that interested in having my health care administered with all of the care and compassion the IRS can muster.

What about business competitiveness? Is it fair for companies like Boeing to be expected to provide health insurance for their employees when a lot of the international companies they compete with don’t have to spend money on health care because their governments provide people with coverage. There are those who argue that without significant changes American businesses will continue to be crippled by health expenses.

Well there’s plenty of things we could do to increase access that doesn’t cost the taxpayers anything, that isn’t going to bankrupt America. You could allow businesses and individuals to buy insurance across state lines. My goal is I want as many health insurance companies in this state chasing you around for your business as you can possibly get, so you can decide what you want in your plan instead of some bureaucrat in D.C. deciding for you. Maybe you want maternity, maybe you don’t, but you’re paying for it. Why don’t you decide. That’s one piece. Lawsuit reform is another piece. It’s been done in other states where it’s actually reduced costs. Health savings accounts actually makes you a customer, where it’s really your money. When it’s your money and you say I need an MRI and I’ve got nine different places to choose from, you choose where you go. It makes you a customer, there’s no conduit. Why not allow individuals and businesses to group together so they can buy insurance like the big boys do? None of those things cost taxpayers anything and would increase access and reduce cost. It makes it more affordable and doesn’t lead the government to being in charge of your health care.

One of your Republican primary opponents, Clint Didier, issued a series of demands that you adhere to positions on things like abortion before he could endorse you. You refused. How do you react to what seems to be a challenge from the right? Some people say you’re just not conservative enough for them.

You know, it’s interesting. I’m running against Patty Murray, who is ranked the most liberal senator in Washington, D.C., by the non-partisan National Journal. You have to be pretty liberal to get to the left of socialist Bernie Sanders from Vermont. And she says I’m too conservative. My primary opponent says I’m not conservative enough. I think that makes me just about right for the state of Washington.

Patty Murray’s been in office for 18 years. Why should voters choose you over her?

We thank her for her service, but she’s been there a long time. She’s number four in leadership. She was the deciding vote against the balanced budget amendment. She has created deficits. She has created some of these problems because she’s in leadership. I’m the guy, who as a state senator, balanced the biggest deficit in state history without raising taxes and still protected the vulnerable, as chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. I actually have experience at balancing budgets…I think those are some of the skills we need right now. That’s a big piece of this puzzle. I also have experience at being able to do it by working across party lines as well and she’s been working in a highly partisan fashion – that health care bill, I’ve never seen anything more partisan than that.